The 1 Corinthians "Love Verse"

Updated on February 17, 2011

The 1 Corinthians Love Verse

I Corinthians 13:4-8

"4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. 8 Love never fails..." (commentary below)

This is the so-called 1 Corinthians "Love Verse", a scripture passage
with both immense popularity and even greater importance. It sums up
everything most
important in life and spirituality. It tells us how we
must be toward our fellow human, and at the same time reveals God’s
nature towards every person, because “God is love. Whoever lives in love
lives in God, and God in them” (1 John 4:16). As the verses before this passage reveal, it does not matter in
the least what we do in life, or what “spiritual gifts” we might
possess, if we do not have love. Without love, everything we do will
amount
to utter meaninglessness. Therefore, it
is necessary that we understand, to the best of our abilities, what is
meant by “love”. To that end, I will analyze certain parts of this passage,
focusing particularly on key words as they were in the original
Greek.

1 Corinthians 13:4-8: The Verses in Greek

Love, In Every Sense of the Word

The word translated “love” is “ἀγάπη” (agape), which in the New
Testament documents seems to refer to a particularly powerful love which
leads to actions and sacrifice on the behalf of others. I
have, sadly, heard certain Christians try to relegate the meaning of
this word to having an “action only” sort of connotation, removing
feelings from it entirely. I’ve heard this done in an attempt to explain
how we can possibly love our enemies, as the New Testament enjoins us
to. This is a terrible mistake. The word “agape” comes from a verb
(agapao) which, when directed towards humans, absolutely carries a sense
of strong emotion and affection. It can even be translated as “to
caress”. When we are told to love our enemies, it does not mean that we
are to do good to them out of a mere sense of moral obligation. Indeed,
we are to love them in every deep sense of that word, heart, mind, and
soul. If one (such as myself) feels unable to perform such a feat, the
only suggestion I may offer is that one seek God, who is the
source of such love.

Love "Patients"

“Patient”, in verse four, is a translation of “μακροθυμεῖ” (Macrothumei), which is
the third-person active form of a verb. I point this out, not just to
flaunt my knowledge of Greek--although
Love “vaunteth not itself”, I, unfortunately, have been known to
vaunt--but for a reason: this entire passage, in the Greek, refers to
what Love does, rather than what it is. It is impossible to
describe what God (Love) is, as God is infinite and our words are
finite. In fact, it is impossible to describe what anyone “is”, as any
person’s subjective experience is essentially infinite as well, and is
not the mere confluence of a finite set of external variables which we
can identify and label. It is, however, possible to say what God (Love) does.
God, like anyone else, is best known and understood by what He does. So
the passage says “love patients (verb)”, which is nonsense in English,
but makes beautiful sense in Greek.

Further examined, “patient” (Macrothumei”) can be broken down as
follows: “Macro-” (“long”) + “thumos” (“heart/soul”). So literally, it
means “to long-heart (verb)”. The Greek “thumos” can refer to the soul
or spirit in the sense of one’s very life/essence. To take away “thumos”
then, can mean to take away life. “Thumos” also refers to the “heart”,
as both the seat of the emotions and of the will. Finally, “thumos” can
mean the mind, as the seat of cognition (thoughts). So when we get to
the root of “being patient”, we see that it involves a commitment of all
one’s life/essence, emotions, will, and thoughts. This is the kind of
gut-wrenching, life-giving “patience” that God does to all people, and that we must, therefore, show one another. Love, it would seem, does nothing half-heartedly.

If you're enjoying my writing in this article, please take a moment to look at some of my short poems:click here. This opens in a new window, so you won't lose the article you're currently reading.

Love is Kind

We continue to "love is kind". This is a translation of the Greek “χρηστεύεται” (chresteuetai),
another active verb. It comes from the adjective “chrestos”, which in
turn comes from another verb, “chrao”. “Chrao” means “to furnish/provide
what is needful”. What a beautiful description of what God does for us,
and expects us to do for each other. The adjective “chrestos” means
“serviceable” or “useful”. When applied to people, it also means any or
all of the following: good, honest, trustworthy, and kind.

I hope that by now it is apparent that, by looking deeper into the origins of words
in this scripture, we may uncover a vast new world of meaning which was
completely hidden before. So that, for example, “being kind” is shown
to entail much more than kindness alone. It does mean to be kind, in our
usual sense of the word, yes. But more than that, it involves providing
people with what they need, being honest and dependable, being
“useful/serviceable” to society, and being a good person in general. And
so we should also be beginning to see why the 1
Corinthians "Love Verse" really does contain all the
most important teachings of religion, as it tells us all the most
important things for living a good life.

Envy and Pride

Envy
and pride/boasting are two sides of the same coin. Both spring from a
self-centered desire to somehow be better than other people. Envy is
self-centeredness manifested in areas where we perceive ourselves to be
lacking relative to other people. Pride is self-centeredness manifested
in areas where we perceive others to be lacking relative to us. Love
makes no such considerations, for it is complete in itself, and thus
does not need to feel superior to anyone in order to feel whole.

The Truth

Love
rejoices with the truth (verse 6). For me, “truth” may be the only concept that
even approaches “love” in its beauty and grandeur. In Greek, the word is
even more beautiful: ἀληθεία (aletheia, pronounced “ah-leh-THAY-ah”).
It is built from the noun “lethos”, which means “a forgetting”, and the
prefix “a-”, which denotes a lack or absence (so it essentially converts
whatever it precedes into its opposite). Thus, in one sense, “truth”
means “that which is not forgotten”. To exhume yet a deeper meaning, we
may consider that “lethos” comes from the verb “lanthano”, which means
“to go unnoticed or unseen”. Thus, since the prefix “a-” would reverse
this concept, truth would be seen to mean something which is noticed.

Truth,
as it stands alone, is something obvious. It can not go unnoticed. It
will never remain forgotten. It may be covered or warped in various
ways, but in the end, truth is reality itself. As such, it is all there
really is. Error and deception have no substance of their own. They are
phantoms, mere parasites which feed on the truth. Truth is the One
Reality, and so it will be the only thing that is remembered eventually.
Whatever is untrue will one day be forgotten.

Love Never Fails

God
is Love, and Love never fails. Because God is love, He loves every
creature with the same violent, never-ending love, whether they love Him
or hate Him in return. It is an active love, by which God, with the
full force of all His will, thoughts, emotions, and very life-force,
seeks to provide every being with what it needs. And because love will
not fail, God/Love will eventually succeed in providing every single
individual creature, human or not, with everything they need. It is
worth repeating: Love will utterly succeed at its singular desire, which
is to fulfill every single living being in every possible way. It is a
fact as grand, beautiful, and inevitable as Truth itself.

1 Corinthians Love Verse: KJV or NIV?The 1 Corinthians "Love Verse": Different Translations In this article, I examine how the King James Version (KJV)and the New International Version (NIV) differ in their translation of the 1 Corinthians 13 passage.

Comments 5 comments

I like this. I wrote a hobe about this in response to someone and they told me that it wasn't the whole of love but only agape love. I told them it was false that these verses tell of all love. I will give you the name of the hub and if you would like the link I will provide. It is: Making LOVE into something it is not...

I added your link to my hub.

japtaker 5 years ago from United States Author

Lady Guinevere,

It is good to find someone who feels the same way about such issues. It baffles me, some of the things that people have come up with, and are willing to say, in the name of Christ or God. It always gives me hope to find other people who will stand up for Truth.

And thank you very much for liking my article enough to link to it on your hub. I will certainly give that hub a look when I get a moment (right now, I have to clock in for work in about two minutes). Thank you also, for reading and commenting on so many of my hubs, and for sharing them! It means so much to me that you did all that, as you are the first person who has told me you have done so :) It makes me feel like there are people out there who will actually appreciate what I have to say. Thank you!

And thank you, Happyboomernurse, for your encouraging comment also!

Cathyrin 5 years ago from Philippines

Very informative hub you have here. Love is a very simple word and yet have very complex and deep meaning. Thanks for bringing this up and giving us an educational insight with regards to what really lies within the word "love". Voted this hub up and useful.